>From ALTER@ucs.indiana.edu Wed Sep 21 09:54:14 1994 Received: from geneva.ucs.indiana.edu (portal.ucs.indiana.edu [129.79.4.21]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.9/CNS-3.5) with SMTP id JAA19760 for ; Wed, 21 Sep 1994 09:54:11 -0600 Message-Id: <199409211554.JAA19760@csf.Colorado.EDU> Received: from PRISM.DECnet by geneva.ucs.indiana.edu (5.65c+/9.6jsm) id AA01472; Wed, 21 Sep 1994 10:55:33 -0500 Date: Wed, 21 Sep 94 10:55:54 EST From: "George Alter, History & PIRT" X-To: PO%"ppn@csf.colorado.edu" Subject: "overpopulation" To: ppn@csf.colorado.edu Pamela, I'm glad to hear that you have a more positive view of the Cairo conference than your earlier message implied. There are certainly grounds for witholding a final judgement until we see the actual programs that grow out of the conference. However, the rest of your message has me quite mystified. Surely, the writer in the Asian Economic Review was referring to labor shortages in "Asia's leading economies" of Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. These are hardly "developing" countries, anymore, so your somewhat confusing comments on international labor markets may be based on a misunderstanding. I would be more interested to learn what you base some of your demographic speculations on. For example, you write > ... If there are no available jobs as the children grow up, > they - or the whole family - are likely to migrate to somewhere there are > (or are rumored to be) jobs. When these choices don't fit the quickly > changing labor market, or the jobs available don't pay well enough to > support the people depending on them, people die. What people die? What are they dying from? Are you talking about a demographic mechanism, or do you have in mind some kind of political unrest? You also speculate that people will have higher fertility in the expectation of better jobs. > ... Jobs, in a market system, may well be > moved AWAY from areas with lots of unemployed workers, to areas where > labor is becoming short, but is cheap. This encourages families to > increase their fertility in the "cheap labor" areas - in conflict with > the long-term needs of the region, nation and planet. The implication of this statement (perhaps, unintended) is that economic development in poor countries should be limited, because it might increase their birth rates. Economic demographers have been looking for evidence that people increase their fertility in response to economic opportunities for at least 30 years, and the results are very meager. Any (presumed) positive effects of higher incomes are always overwhelmed by other negative effects on fertility that are correlated with higher incomes. I am not aware of any evidence that economic development in poor countries leads to higher fertility. Do you have something specific in mind? The usual argument is that economic development promotes smaller families, and most of the debate in demography has been over the possibility of reducing fertility in places where incomes are not rising. I support the goal of moving the debate in a progressive direction, but I would like to see a debate that is grounded in the evidence of demographic behavior that we do already have. Opponents of the Cairo conference spread a number of half-truths and distortions about the claims and findings of demographic research. I think that we should be careful that loose and unsupported speculations are not open to misrepresentation and exploitation by those with quite different agendas. George Alter ============================================= From: PO1::"behan@osiris.Colorado.EDU" 20-SEP-1994 13:47:53.50 To: Multiple recipients of list CC: Subj: RE: "overpopulation" On Fri, 16 Sep 1994, George Alter, History & PIRT wrote: > Pamela, > > I was distressed to find you citing with > approval the article below from the Far Eastern > Economic Review. I have been reading the documents > from the Cairo Conference as they appear on the UN > POPIN Gopher server, and this characterization does > not fit what I see at all. The documents that I have > been reading do not define "the population 'problem' > in terms of yellow and brown peoples." Instead, > they point to poverty and inequality within and between > nations as the fundamental problem. > > In fact, the remarkable thing about the Cairo plan > is the prominence that it gives to empowering women > and implementing programs of reproductive health > that go beyond simply family planning. > > I rather expected you to support the direction in which > the Cairo conference moved the debate. > > George Alter > Indiana University George, I did not intend to imply approval of the whole message, only to draw the list's attention to its reasoning, especially of the last point: > "The irony today is that Cairo's call to lower > birth rates comes at a time when Asia's leading economies > are suffering from LABOR SHORTAGES while Europe, with > its plummeting birth rates, finds itself plagued by > UNEMPLOYMENT...." (Emphasis added.) I do indeed approve of the direction in which the Cairo conference and U.N. plan have moved the debate. The U.N. plan is very progressive, but may yet be reversed by the reaction that has just started to form. I am not convinced that most of the people of the developed nations have given up thinking of the population 'problem' in terms of 'yellow and brown peoples.' When it comes to asking the First World to live within a sustainable level of comfort/technology that can be shared by everyone on the planet, I expect a LOT more racism and classism to surface. The interesting point in the quotation (to me) is the difficulty of resolving short and long-term labor needs along with population pressures, especially within a market system. Fertility is determined by families, within their ability to control it (education, contraception access, etc.), by their ability to forsee the near future for themselves and their children - fairly short-term, but not nearly as short-term as market needs. If there are no available jobs as the children grow up, they - or the whole family - are likely to migrate to somewhere there are (or are rumored to be) jobs. When these choices don't fit the quickly changing labor market, or the jobs available don't pay well enough to support the people depending on them, people die. The labor market, these days, can change - or move - a lot faster than people can adjust their fertility or migrate to meet it. It would be a complex problem even if economies were carefully planned to meet human needs. A mechanism like the market, which bears no relation to human needs, can make it much worse. Jobs, in a market system, may well be moved AWAY from areas with lots of unemployed workers, to areas where labor is becoming short, but is cheap. This encourages families to increase their fertility in the "cheap labor" areas - in conflict with the long-term needs of the region, nation and planet. I know that the "invisible hand" is supposed to take care of all this. Just think, however, what that means in a situation where the developed countries have high unemployment and developing countries begin to experience labor shortages. (That is, where companies continue to move their manufacturing or service work to Third World nations, as they do now.) The market "should" result in wages dropping in developed nations, and rising in developing nations, until it's as profitable to manufacture in the First as the Third World. Then the number of jobs would rise in developed nations, unemployment abate, and the number of jobs drop in developing nations, easing the labor shortage. Eventually (if resources don't run out), general prosperity should rise. These shifts would first, however, result in far lower wages, and a far lower standard of living, for First World working people (not to mention greatly increased inequality). This would be so politically unpopular that it's not hard to foresee riots, then wars, to prevent it. (As a matter of fact, haven't we already fought a war or two to assure our access to Third World oil & other resources?) How do we get out of this connundrum? And how do we keep the population debate moving in a progressive direction? Pamela Behan